The Hobbit

[moi621 (imported)]

HBO's feature premiere this month is the first installment of "The Hobbit"

I Wonder

:tongueout

Am I getting old or is The Hobbit really a stinker.

A victim of Peter Jackson's greed.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.

Moi

Once a hard core Tolkien fan.

Stephan Colbert has that universe down cold.

[Paolo]

It's not you.

The movie sucked.

I love Tokien, but I hated this movie.

God damn racing rabbits...what was that wizard, Santa Claus?!

[Riverwind (imported)]

Now just wait a minute, it was not that bad for a movie, even if its in three installments (more money that way).

I think you guys are way to critical - if you go to a movie looking for truth watch non fiction anything else sit back and expect nothing then be surprised.

Then again I read the book 40+ years ago and don't remember much but what I do remember I did not see any of in this movie.

River

[Dave (imported)]

I liked the first three but even after I read the books, I did not read any more of Tolkien.

I just can't go for another three movies.

[gareth19 (imported)]

HBO's feature premiere this month is the first installment of "The Hobbit"

I Wonder

:tongueout

Am I getting old or is The Hobbit really a stinker.

A victim of Peter Jackson's greed.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.

Moi

Once a hard core Tolkien fan.

Stephan Colbert has that universe down cold.

No, it's not you. Peter Jackson simply doesn't understand Tolkien, and it shows. He has cut out parts of the book and rewritten much of it. Tolkien's story begins "In a hole there lived a hobbit." Jackson takes fifteen minutes of recycled LOTR footage to get to the beginning of the story. He deletes Bilbo's flustered invitation to Gandalf to tea the next day making Gandalf's and the dwarves' appearance seem preemptory and rude; we miss Bilbo's inner conflicts over the Unexpected Party (his desire to be a gracious host and his discomfiture over the predations on his larder). In the book, Bilbo agrees to accompany the dwarves and signs the contract but oversleeps and just makes the 11 o'clock departure time; in the movie, he hasn't signed the contract, has a change of heart and rushes with the newly signed contract. And so it goes. When they reach Rivendell, Saruman puts in an appearance at a non-existent meeting concerning the return of the power in Mirkwood. While this must be very gratifying to Christopher Lee's accountants, it has no place in The Hobbit. At almost every turn Jackson or his screen writers display the arrogant assumption that they can tell Bilbo's story better than Tolkien. They can't; they are several orders of magnitude less talented or imaginative than Tolkien and have produced a totally pedestrian product.

You can still be a Tolkien fan and dislike Jackson's pretentious drivel.

BTW Christopher Tolkien once explained that Tolkien had in fact finished two versions of the Silmarilion before the Hobbit was ever written; what he couldn't manage to do was finish a third version in which the tale of the Silmarils was grafted onto the Hobbit legend. Originally, they were two quite different stories. When trying to rewrite a sequel to the Hobbit, Tolkien returned to the matter of the Silmarilion and tried grafting the story onto the earlier matter. That necessitated rewriting parts of the Hobbit and recasting parts of the earlier Silmarilion legend. In the end the graft didn't work.

The Hobbit is worth reading on its own. The Silmarilion is unreadable, but Farmer Giles of Ham or the Smith of Wooton Major are quite readable.

[Riverwind (imported)]

This would be normal of a movie based on a book, the screen play will be different and the movie different from the books, just look at the Harry Potter books and movies, I have yet to see a movie or series that followed a book without changing something, Shogun comes to mind as close as it was it still changed things.

So if your a purest and think that the book is perfect don't watch the movie, you will be disappointed. Eragon the book was so much more then the movie which change things and only caught the highlights of the book.

So back to my point, was the movie watchable? yes it was.

Was it exactly like the book? if this is what you expected, based on past experiences from Hollywood, and were disappointed, your foolish.

Then sometimes you can watch a movie, not ever having read the book only to go read it and find out the movie was based loosely on several books.

I guess my point is this, was the movie watchable? yes it was. NO other requirement is necessary.

Recommendations: If you read the book, don't see the movie.

[moi621 (imported)]

The LOTR movies were great.

My major complaint is left out the last part of the story, The Scouring of the Shire.

A most hard hitting part of the story about the effect of that distant war on home, and how it came home.

My minor complaint is omitting that little flower in Loth Lorien, I believe the name of it was elenor.

And Samwise named his first born, a daughter after that flower.

I was never able to master, The Silmarilion. Too hard on the dyslexia.

There is something in the pace of The Hobbit that I just feel like I'm watching a PBS production.

The story seems delivered at an even slower pace then LOTR's. I guess I am suppose to be wowed by the CGI.

Having followed the books so well in LOTR's, it is disappointing this is NOT The Hobbit but a facsimile.

Moi

It comes in pints too.

In the early seventies I read LOTR. I was so impressed, I got a big peice of butcher paper and started water coloring scenes. The Shire and the road to Mordor. I had Aragorn/Strider dead on. And a pretty good Shire to Jackson's. Our interpretations were so similar I was sure he was good.

I am not an artist. So my "need" to draw this experience was fascinating. I lost hours at a time painting. And that was freakier then any drug, just losing time like that, painting.

[gareth19 (imported)]

This would be normal of a movie based on a book, the screen play will be different and the movie different from the books, just look at the Harry Potter books and movies, I have yet to see a movie or series that followed a book without changing something, Shogun comes to mind as close as it was it still changed things.

So if your a purest and think that the book is perfect don't watch the movie, you will be disappointed. Eragon the book was so much more then the movie which change things and only caught the highlights of the book.

So back to my point, was the movie watchable? yes it was.

Was it exactly like the book? if this is what you expected, based on past experiences from Hollywood, and were disappointed, your foolish.

Then sometimes you can watch a movie, not ever having read the book only to go read it and find out the movie was based loosely on several books.

I guess my point is this, was the movie watchable? yes it was. NO other requirement is necessary.

Recommendations: If you read the book, don't see the movie.

It is a truism that a movie script must differ from a novel, but the Harry Potter movies were reasonably faithful to the books; Emma Thompson's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility was faithful to the vision of Austen even though having lost the omniscient narrator of the Austen novels , the movie also lost the wonderful irony of Austen wry comments on her characters. But The Hobbit completely butchered Tolkien's work and replaced its pre-Rafaelite aesthetic with Jackson's plebeian vision. Thorin's officiousness (in the novel he speaks as if chairing a university committee and Tolkien comments on his ability to speak at length without saying anything of substance) is replaced by a nostalgic longing for a lost land and he becomes a symbol of displaced people, something Tolkien never intended. Bilbo intercedes to rescue him from the Wargs (and genocidal Orcs intent on exterminating Thorin's line, again neither the Orc king nor the genocide are part of Tolkien's vision) and that causes Thorin to reconcile with Bilbo. In the novel, there is a much more subtle transformation. With the trolls, Gandalf interceded and saves the party; thereafter Bilbo becomes more involved and confident; in the forest with the ring he outwits the spiders and rescues the dwarves, who then fall into the woodelves's hands and are imprisoned except for invisible Bilbo, who effects a rescue and plans the escape in barrels. At the end of that episode Thorin's wonders what to do next and Bilbo replies, effectively assuming leadership of the party. What Tolkien presents (and so apparently intended) is the slow transformation of Bilbo from stay-at-home to reluctant but effective leader. It is not what Jackson left out, but the Andrew Lloyd-Weber topicality that he has foisted onto the story that make this such an abomination and a mediocre piece of film-making. If you never read the books, the film would still be an awful piece of unimaginative, pedestrian horseshit, the fantasy equivalent of Titanic, a vapid exercise in special effects and labored camera angles replete with stock characterizations and trite motivations. As I don't give a shit about Jack's aspirations or believe in Rose's artistic soul and only root for the iceberg, so I don't find Jackson's misinterpretation of Thorin as aggrieved exile or Bilbo as righter of wrongs inspiring or worth watching. It is a crappy movie with stock, third-rate characters, the kind of formulaic thing that the Disney studio churned out by the cartload after Walt died and the mediocrities took over assuring themselves that they were faithful to Walt's vision, but they were just as deluded in assuming that they understood Walt Disney's genius as Jackson is in imagining that he comprehends Tolkien.

[transward (imported)]

I think a lot of the problem is the different tones of the two books. LOTR is epic drama, nearly high tragedy; the Hobbit is much closer to a fairy tale. The tone is much lighter, the impending calamities are but a small cloud on the distant horizon. Jackson's style suited LOTR; I don't think it suits for the Hobbit. I would like to see a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of the Hobbit. a la the Corpse Bride.

Transward

[transward (imported)]

I think a lot of the problem is the different tones of the two books. LOTR is epic drama, nearly high tragedy; the Hobbit is much closer to a fairy tale.

I believe Tolkien wrote it as a children's book; LOTR is for adults. In the Hobbit t

he tone is much lighter, the impending calamities are but a small cloud on the distant horizon. Jackson's style suited LOTR; I don't think it suits the Hobbit. I would like to see a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of the Hobbit. a la the Corpse Bride.

Transward